Rand Paul Accuses Feds of Waging War on Doughnuts

Updated at 1:01 pm, November 12th, 2013

Office of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul(CHARLESTON, S.C.) — The federal government is trying to take away your doughnuts, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., warned in a speech in South Carolina this week.

“They’re coming after your doughnuts! Did you hear they’re coming after the trans fat in your doughnuts?” Paul is seen saying in this video, referring to the Food and Drug Administration’s decision last week to phase out trans fats.

The Kentucky Republican even suggested Americans should assess the weight of the FDA agents who made the decision to ban trans fats, and if their BMIs’ are too high, they should be whipped into shape.

“The FDA has banned unilaterally — some unelected bureaucrat has banned trans fats. And so I said we need to line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this,” Paul said. “And not only that, any of them with a BMI over 16 or whatever the number you’re supposed to have, I want to see them on the treadmill and I want someone from maybe OSHA, lashing them while they’re working on the treadmill.”

“Because if we’re going to have a nanny state, and everybody’s got to eat the right thing and you can’t eat a doughnut, maybe we ought to just enforce it on the government workers first,” he added.

But as Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine points out, doughnuts do not unilaterally require trans fats in their recipes, and several doughnut makers like Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme have already removed trans fats from their sweet pastries.